The most crappiest or pathetic locos in this country.

I know this is about engines in this country, but honorable mention would have to go to any loco described thus: " the AA20 was a complete disaster. It spread the track, wrecked every set of points it passed over, and derailed almost every time it moved. Steaming was poor, and the locomotive too powerful for existing couplings and too long for the turntables. It was totally unusable."

http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/russ/russrefr.htm

:biggrin1:

 

would it be a "Deltic"???:drum:

 

I posted a link to one page of this site, but I recommend the whole site to anyone in need of a good chuckle at someone else's expense!

http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm


PS It answers dan.lank's question about cab-forward engines too

 

From my all be it limited experience L&B tank engines don't seem to be up to much.

Tim

 

In my opinion some of the worst engines are Southern designs. I cant stand the huge rivets in the smoke box edging and think most of them lack the power and magestic appearance that a lot of other railways had mastered. I like a certain ammount of uniformity, the NER and GWR mastering this with the same dimensions on things like smoke box door handles, or same kind of cabs, and tenders. They were years ahead of their contemporaries and i think it shows when southern engines find themselves on unfamiliar territory with a hill to climb. Repton is an engine I loath on the NYMR and things like S15s and Lords look equally appauling and personally in my own opinion are a lot worst than many other engines out there.

Id say some of the worst engines I think are: S15, Schools, Lord Nelson's, and some of the early GNR and GER 0-6-0 goods engines.... diesels would be.... Hymek, class 56 and 73.... and as for Southern Mk. 1 slam door EMU stock... it does'nt even have a proper engine... whats all that about!!

 

Oooooh! You are going to get in sooooo much trouble with the narrow-gauge brigade! :boom:

Foxy

 

I just wonder if this thread is based on personal prejudice, or the actual engineering behind the classes concerned? The reason I cited the paget locomotive was because it failed on its first test run, was put onto storage and cut up some years later. It was not fit for purpose. Many of the classes cited did their work, day in day out, without problems.

I suppose really I was thinking objectively and not subjectively...

 

Well I'm quite happy to be proved wrong but until it becomes a reliable, free steaming, efficient, capable, easy to maintain and operate member of the loco fleet like oooh lets say Linda or Blanche, then I will stick with my original statement.

Tim

 

What a silly and pointless thread.

Speaking subjectively, of course.

 

I can't say I know very much about Lyd as it stands, but surely as a recently completed new build, there's bound to be modifications and fixes made in the future to make it a better engine? The more you learn about it, the more you can adapt what you have and make it better?

Linda and Blanche were not always as good as they reportedly are now. I don't doubt that every engine has had to have some degree of modification to become better over time.

 

Silly ? Pointless ? Monty Python mad a living out of that and entertained millions in the process...
And as a purveyor of the funnies yourself thought youd bve cutting loose....

Pity its not whats the most boring railway... then we could get stuck into the GWR

 

It's only a matter of time before someone decides to build a replica!hwell:

 

Schools were the most powerful 4-4-0s ever to run in the UK and put in some sterling performances in their day and as for not being able to climb hills, I've never had a bad run behind 30926 on the Moors. A hill is a hill - locos are not sentient beings thinking "oh dear, I'm not on familiar territory."

 

I agree that this thread is carte-blance to vent spleens over the merits and pitfalls of various designs, but it passes the time if taken in the right spirit. I'm interested in your post, David, as it is polar opposite to mine in many respects, but similar in others (whilst I'm not fussed about uniformity between locomotives, being an advocate of the 'horses for courses' consideration, I am fussed about uniformity of livery, and if I had my way, all classes that operated under BR would be painted in their respective BR liveries, but that's my preference).

Most people seem to think that an N15 is a perfectly adequate design, robust and built like a tank, and they were noted hill-climbers on the South West mainline. As for the rivets, its mainly a matter of personal taste, but many of the designs quoted were fitted with countersunk rivets when originally out-shopped. In several respects, the LSWR/SECR/Southern were years ahead of their contemporaries, possibly too far ahead. Take the humble N class, for instance, which is probably Maunsell's true design of genius. Nothing much like it had been seen before; "What? Exposed valve gear? Civilisation is at an end!" (I think there was only a GCR 2-6-0 before it), was based on sound principles (I hate to say it, but several GWR principles!), and were particularly good on the arduous, stop-start route between Reading and Redhill. Whilst not a comfortable locomotive design and slightly underboilered, they did the job they were designed for, and were more than adequate on light-medium length trains.

The LSWR's H15 was also another case in point, being contemporaneous with the N class, but has received a bad press due to the fact that relatively few were built and that they suffered from being a test-bed for new ideas. However, all of this belies the fact that they were Britain's first true mixed-traffic 4-6-0, predating the 'Hall' class by ten years, and were capable of turning-in creditable performances, if Bradley's account of the class is accurate.

As mentioned earlier, the V class was not really expected to regularly work six-seven coach trains up a 1 in 49 gradient at low speeds, and I can imagine the power-to-weight ratio of this type of locomotive would provide issues on the NYMR, not to mention the exposed rear of the cab. This is probably the main issue with the S15; crew comfort in the harsher climate of the north would certainly raise its head, but I've experienced 825 climbing Goathland bank, and it coped quite well. Once again, however, this was a class that was not designed to 'slog'; the S15s were expected to keep up with the rest of the railway on an intensively-worked mainline, which they did, and they were frequently pressed into passenger use.

Now the LNs, I can see your point, as they were of a comparatively non-standard design (the LSWR designs and SECR designs respectively benefitted from interchangable parts, but in the case of cabs, if it ain't broke, why fix it?), and they were a compartively 'rare' bird, with only 16 built. This resulted in the well-documented firing issues that led to erratic performance, and the need to select crews specifically for the class. However, in their defence, once crews were familiar with them, they produced performances that were equal to, if not better than the N15s (which is not surprising, as they were intended to replace them) on the racing stretches east of Salisbury, but no quite so west. However, it could be argued that if there hadn't been the LNs, there wouldn't have been the Royal Scot class.

As I said, its interesting to see another perspective on classes I am pretty used to (not in terms of the engineering, but the history behind them), but I felt that the post deserved a response.

 

The Lord Nelsons were good enough for Sir William Stainier to base the Royal Scot class on them (at I think thats true I heard it somewhere). I would disagree with most of that but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

 

The clue is in the thread title. "Crappiest" and "pathetic" would not be, at least to my knowledge, descriptions or units of measurement acceptable in any engineering assessment or report! But I've enjoyed reading everybodys' subjective opinions and harmless prejudices. Nevertheless I nominated the Leader for similar reasons to your nomination of the Paget - it wasn't fit to enter service in any role let alone the one it was commissioned for.

And I am very pleased that no-one has (yet) nominated an industrial design. This means (my own subjective and prejudiced conclusion) the Austerity saddle-tank must therefore be the LEAST crappy and pathetic loco ever built.

 

Rather like the only New Zealand Beyer-Garratts, six cylinder 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 - outside Walschaerts valve gear with the middle cylinder at each end operated in Gresley conjugated fashion. They (there were 3 in total) had 51,500lbs tractive effort (New Zealand is a narrow gauge system) which was too powerful for the drawbars of the available rolling stock, with the result of lots of broken couplings. Eventually they were rebuilt as 6 conventional pacifics, which were widely reckoned to be equally useless but, at only half the tractive effort, without breaking their couplings...

Tom

 

Erm, the Royal Scots were designed when Sir Henry Fowler was CME of the LMS. Sir William Stanier was responsible for the inception of the rebuilding programme.